Management of packets is relatively straight forward when only one operating system is involved because the operating system has sole control over an Ethernet adapter by which Ethernet access is accomplished and can establish filtering policies for the Ethernet adapter with respect to broadcast and multicast packets. However, when an Ethernet adapter is shared by multiple operating systems, such as in a computer system that has been partitioned into multiple virtual systems, each with its own operating system image, no single operating system is permitted to establish filtering policies for all other sharing operating systems.